January 23, 2010

Benjamin Bogard was one of the leading fundamentalist Christians in the first half of the twentieth century. Coming to Arkansas in 1899, he served as the pastor of several churches before settling at Antioch Missionary Baptist Church in Little Rock (Pulaski County), where he stayed for almost thirty years. As a member of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) and several fundamentalist organizations, he led the movement for the passage of a law to ban the teaching of evolution in public schools. Passed in 1928, the law stayed in effect until 1968.